An analysis of research and literature on CREATIVITY IN ...

[Pages:37]An analysis of research and literature on

CREATIVITY IN EDUCATION

Report prepared for the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority by Anna Craft March 2001

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Contents

1.0 Introduction 1.1 Aims and purposes 1.2 Approach taken and areas covered

Page Numbers 4

2.0 A summary of the research and literature on creativity

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2.1 Historical overview

2.2 The early part of the twentieth century

2.3 More recent directions in creativity research

2.4 Lines of study stemming from the 1950s

2.4.1 Personality

2.4.2 Cognition

2.4.3 Ways to stimulate creativity

2.4.4 Creativity and social systems

2.5 Background to creativity in education

2.6 Broader claims for creativity in the curriculum

3.0 What do we mean by creativity? 3.1 Definitions or descriptions of creativity 3.2 High creativity 3.3 Ordinary, or `democratic' creativity

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4.0 The development of creativity in education 4.1 Research into the development of creativity in education 4.1.1 Comprehensive approaches 4.1.2 Educational approaches 4.1.3 Psychodynamic approaches 4.1.4 Humanistic approaches 4.1.5 Behaviourist approaches 4.2 Teaching approaches to developing creativity 4.2.1 `Creative cycle' approaches 4.2.2 Single-strategy approaches 4.2.3 Multi-strategy approaches 4.2.4 System approaches 4.2.5 Overall pedagogic criteria approaches

16-22

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5.0 Assessment and creativity 5.1 Recording and assessing creativity

6.0 Conclusions and key findings 6.1 High and democratic creativity 6.2 Domain-specific and generic creativity 6.3 Teacher and pupil creativity 6.4 Pedagogic strategies 6.5 Recording and assessing creativity 6.6 Gender issues 6.7 Cultural issues 6.8 Social context issues

7.0 References

23-24 25-28

29-37

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Section 1: Introduction

1.1 Aims and purposes

This review forms part of a project which the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) is taking forward on creativity across the curriculum. The purpose of the project is to identify key features that enable the development of pupils' creativity.

This review identifies some key messages from the research and literature related to creativity and highlights some issues for further investigation.

1.2 Approach taken and areas covered

The review has included literature published in books and journals in a range of disciplines and national contexts. There is a large variety of research on creativity. Its range is extremely broad, and as Rhyammer & Brolin (1999) point out, there has been `an even broader range of speculation' about the nature of creativity. Narrowing the literature search to relevant sources was problematic, one reason being the range of related terms used to describe so-called creative activity. In the economic environment, for example, the terms `entrepreneurship' and `enterprise' are used, whereas in sociology the term used is `innovation'. Yet in education and psychology, the term `creativity' is widely used.

In this particular literature review the focus has mainly been on texts relating to education, developed in the foundation disciplines of psychology, philosophy, sociology and neurophysiology, as well as applied areas such as business and education policy and practice. They are mainly from North America and Great Britain but also include texts from Australia, Austria, Germany, Japan, the Macedonian region of former Yugoslavia, Italy, Bulgaria, Norway, Sweden and the Sudan.

Whilst aiming to be as comprehensive as possible, any literature search may inevitably miss something out. There is, for example, some discussion in the literature of differences between Eastern and Western conceptions of creativity, but this has not been included here. This review has focused on creativity in its generic form rather than within subject domains, although quite a lot has been written about creativity in some subject areas, specifically music, drama, art, information and communication technology, design and technology and mathematics. In addition, a little has been written on leadership/management practices and creativity as well as counselling and creativity, both of which may be relevant to schools. There is also a great deal of literature concerned with creativity in engineering and with gifted pupils (although this latter appears to imply a particular view of creativity).

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Section 2: A summary of the research and literature on creativity

2.1 Historical overview

Theories and ideas about creativity stem from far back in history, unsurprising as Ryhammer & Brolin (1999) point out, given that the development of new ideas and original products is a particularly human characteristic. The notion of `inspiration' or `getting an idea' (ibid, page 260), is found in the Greek, Judaic, Christian and Muslim traditions and is founded on the belief that a higher power produces it. During the Romantic era in Europe, the source of inspiration and its artistic expression was seen as being the human being. During this era, originality, insight, the creative genius and the subjectivity of feeling were highly valued. From the end of the nineteenth century, people began to investigate the question of what fostered creativity.

The first systematic study of creativity was undertaken by Galton (1869). His focus was `genius' and there followed a hundred or so studies on this theme, defined as achievement acknowledged in the wider public arena. This line of investigation remained prevalent into the 1920s, when the focus in psychology shifted to the investigation of intelligence. Although Binet's work included some investigation of the creative side of intelligence, the major study of creativity in psychology occurred in the 1950s.

2.2 The early part of the twentieth century

Although creativity has a very long history, systematic study of it began at the turn of the last century. The early years of the twentieth century saw a move toward empirical investigation of creativity within the new discipline of psychology. There were four major traditions in which this took place:

the psychoanalytic tradition (including Freud's discussion of creativity as the sublimation of drives and Winnicott's work on development which makes creativity central and intrinsic to human nature) the cognitive tradition (stemming from Galton's work and including Mednick's exploration of the associative process and Guilford's exploration of divergent production of ideas and products) the behaviourist tradition (including Skinner's discussion of chance mutation in the repertoire of behaviours) the humanistic tradition (including Rogers, May and Maslow whose discussions focused on the self-realising person acting in harmony with their inner needs and potentialities).

As Ryhammer and Brolin (1999) point out, some theorists were influenced by more than one tradition or line of work. Overall however, the early decades of the twentieth century were influenced more by philosophical speculation than by empirical investigations, because of the methodological approaches

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of at least two of the four branches described above. These approaches to the study of creativity continue to provide theoretical frames for investigators, although with different emphases at different points in time.

2.3 More recent directions in creativity research

As indicated above, a particularly rich and influential period of research in creativity occurred during the 1950s. Here the focus was on the psychological determinants of individual genius and giftedness. Empirical work formed the methodological basis for much of the investigative work, usually involving large-scale, positivist studies. Many would argue that this era of research was launched by Guilford's (1950) examination of the limitations of intelligence tests and his investigation of `divergent thinking'. There followed a large amount of research which attempted to test and measure creativity, to pin down its characteristics and to foster it through specific teaching approaches.

2.4 Lines of study stemming from the 1950s

The 1950s research led to three major lines of development: work on personality, cognition and how to stimulate creativity. These lines have drawn on all the four methodological traditions given above. The three major lines of development were as follows.

2.4.1 Personality

This included a focus on prominent creative persons, notably carried out by the Institute of Personality Assessment and Research, at Berkeley (including the work of MacKinnon, 1975, Getzels & Csiksentmihalyi, 1976, and Simonton, 1984). It also studied much narrower personality traits or dispositions which are correlated either positively or negatively with creativity, such as Dogmatism, conformism, narcissism, frustration, resilience, elation, hypomania, and affect tolerance (surveys of these in Shaw & Runco, 1994, and Eisenman, 1997).

From this particular strand of creativity research, the creative person can, it seems, be described as having the following characteristics (summarised by Brolin, 1992):

strong motivation endurance intellectual curiosity deep commitment independence in thought and action strong desire for self-realisation strong sense of self

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strong self-confidence openness to impressions from within and without attracted to complexity and obscurity high sensitivity high capacity for emotional involvement in their investigations.

Although this line of research has provided important information about creative persons, it has been criticised for a range of reasons. The most significant of these is that the studies have been too narrow, focused on eminent and/or productive persons and that consequently the qualities appear to be both contradictory and superficial. In addition, as the criteria for the selection of the individuals and the criteria for defining what is creative vary from study to study, it is difficult to compare one with another. Eysenck, on the other hand, has recently argued that studies of creative individuals have demonstrated surprising agreement over the years (Eysenck, 1997).

Dacey & Lennon (2000) suggest that one distinctive set of attitudes stands out in life-long, high level, creative achievement. These are:

self-control sustained hard work determination perseverance.

Stoycheva (1996) suggested, from her studies of creativity of very able pupils in Bulgarian secondary schools, that highly creative pupils have self-perceptions, values and motivations that differ from those of other pupils, which can create problems for them in seeking peer acceptance. In addition, she found that teachers tended to devalue independence of judgement and also the involvement of emotion, which are two factors associated in personality studies of creativity with high creative potential. She also found that teachers put a very low value on creativity traits within the school environment and that their perceptions of creativity were centred around its intellectual aspects and problem-solving processes.

2.4.2 Cognition

Various branches of study emerged in the early years of twentieth century. They can be summarised as follows:

creativity as an aspect of intelligence (for example, Binet & Henri, 1896) creativity as a mainly unconscious process (for example, Poincare, 1913, Freud, 1957) creativity as a problem-solving capacity (for example, Wallas, 1926) creativity as an associative process (for example, Spearman, 1931).

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Creativity has also been described in relation to various processes of thought and experience, summarised by Ryhammer & Brolin (1999) and including the following:

thinking in opposites, analogies and metaphors intuition inspiration intelligence various processes of mental representation specific perception processes problem finding problem solving.

Coming to the latter half of the twentieth century, two major lines of creativity investigation under the cognition umbrella have occurred since the 1950s, namely psychometrics and experimental psychodynamics.

Psychometrics: Psychometric approaches to creativity were begun by Guilford, who developed a tool for measuring the extent of divergent thinking, which he later developed into the concept of `divergent production' (Guilford, 1967). Later variations of Guilford's work include the Torrance tests of creative thinking (1966, 1974), which have permeated school contexts, particularly in the United States where tests have been used to assess pupils' creative thinking. This approach was influenced heavily by Mooney's (1963) `four elements' view of creativity, which defined it as encompassing specific aspects of the environment (place) of creation, the product as an outcome of creativity, the process of creation and the person doing the creating.

The tests have, however, come under harsh criticism for measuring intelligence-related factors rather than creativity and for being affected too easily by external circumstances. It has also been suggested that the test procedure purely measures `creativity on request' as opposed to creativity in daily life. Others, however, have considered that the tests have proved to be useful estimates of the potential for creative thought (Bachelor & Michael, 1997) and some think that they have a future (Kirschenbaum, 1998, Plucker & Runco, 1998).

Psychodynamics: During the 1970s and 1980s work was undertaken on personality, perception and creativity. These studies focused on specific groups such as architects, students, children and young people, artists and university teachers. They indicate that the creative person has the ability to make alternative views of reality, has good communication between logic and imagination, has the courage to go against convention, has a belief in their own ideas and is emotionally involved in the work of creation (Smith & Carlsson, 1990, Schoon, 1992, Andersson & Rhyammer, 1998).

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